On a hot midafternoon on June 21, 1943, a streetcar filled with passengers eased along the East Lake Line in Birmingham, Alabama. When it reached its next stop no one got off, but one white man and two white women attempted to board the already packed car. The conductor, claiming there was standing room in the “negro” section, told some “negro” passengers who were standing near the entrance...

With racial tensions rising in Birmingham, there was only one thing to do: ensure the separation of the races. This was what Eugene “Bull” Connor, Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety during the 1940s, saw as the only option to ensure public peace. This separation of the races included the segregation of Birmingham’s streetcars. In a letter dated June 29, 1944 to Mr. C. L. Harris of...

The Harlem Renaissance was a period of immense African-American intellectual advancement and culture revitalization. However, leaders in the African-American community were divided on the best way to portray their newfound ideas. The majority of intellects believed that desegregation was the ultimate goal, which was achievable by integrating their culture with white culture. The other school of...

On October 19, 1927, Carrie Buck struggled against the orderlies taking her to the operating room. She wondered how she came to this point in her life. She had been given to a foster family, then raped and impregnated by a family friend. Authorities took away her daughter, Vivian, when Carrie was institutionalized to hide the foster family’s shame. Carrie became Virginia’s first test case in...

Dr. Hamilton Holt, eighth president of Rollins College, passed away on April 26, 1951 at the age of 78. He died of a heart attack at night in his home, two years after he left his presidency at Rollins. During his earlier life, Holt worked for the Independent, which was a weekly magazine founded by his grandfather and other members of a Congregational Church. Eventually Hamilton Holt would...

As Asians began to migrate en masse in the late 19th and early 20th century, the US government passed laws heavily restricting this trans-pacific immigration. This migration became known as “The Yellow Peril.” The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Immigration Act of 1924 both halted the growth and development of the existing Asian minority groups present in the US.[1] This...

In Washington D.C. in 1925, the day of the official conference decision regarding the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline, Alice Hamilton, a leader in the field of toxicology and occupational diseases, issued an article discussing her rejection of the previous 1924 Bureau of Mines Report. The 1924 Bureau of Mines Report stated that tetraethyl lead was safe for gasoline. Hamilton argued...

Two maps, created in 1895 and 1924-25, respectively, offer evidence of the vast changes that occurred in the early 20th century on the Northeast Detroit section of Conner Creek. The original map, from 1895, depicts the course of Conner Creek as it flowed from Warren, MI (part of the northern section of Detroit) through Grosse Pointe and what is now Nortown to the Detroit River just north...

Lake Martin, located in Central Alabama, was the largest manmade lake in the world at the time of its construction. The 25,000-acre lake was formed by Martin Dam, which was built by Alabama Power in 1923. Project designers promoted the construction of Martin Dam by describing its benefits to both agricultural producers and local residents. Among those benefits was the claim that the presence...